the fishman affidavit

The case file for Church of Scientology International v. Fishman and Geertz contains over 700 documents. This web page presents a declaration filed by Steven Fishman on April 9, 1993 in which he included the OT (Operating Thetan) materials as exhibits. Links to a few other interesting affidavits are given at the end of the page. The order form for these materials will not be honored now, since the judge sealed the files on August 15, 1995.

Note: the Church claims that the OT VIII documents are forgeries. This has for some time been the official CoS-statement; probably because OT8 includes some very strange theories about Jesus and many real churches were outraged because of it.

See for instance this quote from (Hubbard's?) OTVIII:

For those of you whose Christian toes I may have stepped on, let me take the opportunity to disabuse you of some lovely myths. For instance, the historic Jesus was not nearly the sainted figure has been made out to be. In addition to being a lover of young boys and men, he was given to uncontrollable bursts of temper and hatred that belied the general message of love, understanding and other typical Marcab PR. You have only to look at the history his teachings inspired to see where it all inevitably leads. It is historic fact and yet man still clings to the ideal, so deep and insidious is the biologic implanting.

It is a good joke that the Galactic Confederacy is associated with the Serpent in the Garden, the beast and other emissaries of the "Prince of Darkness". Yet in certain passages and esoteric interpretations of the Bible (much of which has been taken out and effectively suppressed for centuries) as well as the Cabbalah, the truth reveals itself quite nicely for the clever and the ungullible.

Because of this fragment OT8 has become known as the "Jesus is a pedophile"-OT. Until recently, CoS was adamant that OT8 was a forgery.

Until recently. When Arnaldo Lerma's house was raided by CoS, they took his computer. Under the writ of seizure, they were allowed only to identify files that were copyrighted bij CoS / RTC. A CoS lawyer - Kendrick Moxon, expert attorney and a senior OT - was asked to supervise this, and guess what: he identified OT8 as an RTC copyright and therefore, as a church scripture.

Here is a quote from the court transcripts. Mr. Sullivan (Lerma's lawyer) is speaking and explains to Judge Brinkema which documents Moxon selected as copyright infringements. The Mr. Cooley he is speaking of, is CoS's lawyer for the case, who had earlier in that same session repeated the offical statement that OT8 is a forgery. So, the two CoS lawyers clearly disagree, but Moxon is the one called in as the expert on the copyrights:

page 81

1 what Mr. Cooley represented was a very highly placed
2 Scientology attorney, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Moxin
3 (phonetic), an attorney from Los Angeles, who we were told
4 had obtained the requisite spiritual level to review these
5 materials.
6 Now, we got back 58 disks that allegedly contained
7 the infringing materials. We went through those disks. We
8 went through three of those disks. We printed out some of
9 the shorter ones and went through them in the 30(b)6
10 deposition that we conducted, and the plaintiffs designated
11 Mr. McShane, the President of the RTC, as its 30(b)6
12 witness.
13 We went through three of these documents,
14 presented to him in their entirety. What did we find out?
15 One that they designated as an infringement was this OT 8
16 document that Mr. Cooley speaks of with great passion, that
17 it's a forgery. 'It's an outrageous slander against Jesus
18 Christ.' They designated that and impounded it, Your Honor.
19 They seized it from Mr. Lerma and they impounded it, the
20 same document this they lambast the Washington Post for
21 printing excerpts of.
22 Now, what's the explanation that we are offered in
23 response when we questioned them at the deposition? Well,
24 we are told that obviously Mr. Moxin does not know which
25 documents are which.

page 82

1 We submit to this Court that if Mr. Moxin, a
2 highly placed church attorney, could not make the
3 distinction between which is which, how can Mr. Lerma be
4 expected to act at his peril?

So now CoS has a severe problem. There are two possible answers:
- OT8 is a fake. In which case Moxon overstepped the judge's rules for the search on Lerma's files big time - he designated and impounded it - and also doesn't know his OT's from a forgery (and didn't the cult claim that their technologies improve memory?)
- OT8 is not a fake. In which case Hubbard did refer to Jesus as 'a lover of young boys' and CoS's lawyer Cooley was lying in court when he said that OT8 was a forgery.